A Winn3r is You!  Community
by Yellowfur
Summary: Ex-lawyer Jeff Winger takes charge of his community college study group, and off they go to beat the odds in Metropolis, hopeful for a new start in life. Provided they make it out in one piece...
1. Intro to Fiction

**Disclaimer: I do not own Community. **

Jeff liked to think that for his second mirror check, three minutes wasn't that bad. A time so low used to be reserved for the third or fourth self-inspection; he was improving. Maybe it was a reform of his character, learning from past mistakes, but it was equally likely to be a way to avoid Britta ranting about his vanity again.

He had remembered the name Offdensen, and after extensive searching through his saved e-mails, he realized this man had long ago (or maybe it just seemed like a long time) talked vaguely with him about Jeff being the lawyer for his band. No band name was even mentioned, and Offdensen's name was showing suspiciously spotty results on Google and number of job sites. At the time, on that late night with his high quality German beer in one hand and a computer mouse in the other, Jeff fancied himself quite skilled. Couldn't trick Jeff Winger with some legal scam, not with his expert Google-and-Monster-navigation. But – ironically – that incident very shortly preceded when Jeff lost his law degree and was declared a fraud. The band e-mails were quickly forgotten about.

And now that he had gotten nice and settled in to the idea that he – the clever and infallible Jeff Winger – had indeed made a mistake (and was in the process of fixing it at Greendale Community College with his misfit study group friends), someone who he had considered completely illegitimate wanted an interview.

The study group was not told about the whole online incident. Britta would rant to him about obvious it was that he shouldn't give this guy the time of the day. Shirley would worriedly reprimand him about undoing his progress. Abed would comment on how this guy was a classic shady-type, looking to con Jeff after calculating when he would be perfectly vulnerable. Troy would say something generic to the effect of "Sounds sketchy, bro." Pierce… Pierce's advice would have been disregarded, by the off chance it was relevant and coherent.

But that one thought clawed the back of Jeff's mind.

_It's a job._

He sighed.

Perhaps he had put too much gel in his hair that morning.

* * *

Britta was done skimming through the superficial magazines the train had provided them with, crumpled up on the side of the chair. Now she turned her attention to her cabmates, Troy and Abed (Annie had gotten just too nervous on a rough train and had to go vomit, Shirley went to mother her, and Pierce went to offer thoroughly ignorant advice). "Doesn't this seem strange to you? A magical tournament drops out of the sky and gives us a bunch of fun games to compete in with unnamed teams. The prize is a paying job with a famous band. It screams scam to me."

"Of course," Abed stared at her with those big, emotionless eyes. "Everything about it is suspicious. For all we know, Jeff gave out our credit card information and permission for random drug testing. But I think we were all so bored post-midterms that we would have agreed if he asked if we wanted to do Outward Bound in Minnesota. Jeff has that tendency to talk something up so you don't realize the consequences until you're halfway through. Even I fall for it."

"Wait, random drug testing…? Credit card info? But I don't even have a- oh, wait, yeah I do." Troy put his feet up on the chair in front of him.

"Troy. You don't have a credit card." Britta pushed his feet off.

"Yeah, I do! They swiped this at the cafeteria and guess whaaat? I got some free chicken nuggets and a Nestea, beeyotch!" After clumsily digging around for a second, he thrust a plastic card at Britta.

She sneered at her friend's use of the word 'beeyotch' and looked at the card. "Troy, that's your Greendale ID card."

"Well, it worked."

"They thought you were mentally deficient," Abed said. "That's probably the same reason you got a football scholarship despite being shorter than me and not in any way overweight."

Annie reappeared and sat in the three seats across from them. "Do I look okay?"

"Good for someone who's been vomiting," Abed said.

"Wait, I thought she was puking," Troy said.

"Shirley, how do you feel about this tournament?" Britta chose to completely ignore Pierce when he entered their circle.

Shirley was the last to sit, ushering the others in before taking her own seat. "Oh! I think it's… a nice opportunity for us to do a little bit of traveling, spend some time in a big city." She thought for a second. "Oh, and games!"

"Games? Big city?" Pierce scoffed. "It's not the mall. This whole thing sounds like something dangerous and foreign. Jeff was right to try and investigate, but I don't know how smart it was for him to involve the rest of you."

"Oh, but it was smart for him to involve you?" Britta said.

"That's right. Even a bunch of commies would think twice before harming a high priest of a Reformed Neo-Buddhist colony."

"Pierce, a bunch of con men in suits wouldn't care that you're a high priest of anything."

"Where is Jeff anyway?" Annie looked around the train car with her usual worried eyes.

"He's not even in our train car! He said we'd be too loud." Britta slouched in her seat and looked out the window. "Jeff would rather have some more beauty rest than spend more than time absolutely needed with the people he's probably getting involved in a huge scam."

"Britta, please don't say that," As if anyone could deny Annie anyway, in her little cardigan and skirt set, multiplied by three when she was sickish. "This might benefit us. Jeff wouldn't betray us. We've been through too much together."

"Unless his character undergoes some sort of rapid transformation nearly overnight. Which could happen for any number of reasons."

"Abed…"

* * *

"_You know it's one of hell of an offer."_

"_I do. It doesn't mean I should take it right off the bat."_

"_The tournament's in four days. Doesn't give you much time to think if you want to act properly."_

_Jeff smirked. "You did that on purpose." He sat up and nudged his empty Venti coffee cup to the side. "Where's the paperwork?"_

"_Taken care of. Just agree to do the tournament with your peers. I promise that if you perform satisfactorily, you will all be given transportation and board with your new jobs with Dethklok within a week after the final event."_

"_I don't like it when paperwork's taken care of. Is that weird?"_

"_Understandable. The more people shuffle your papers around, the more they might uncover some more interesting… facts. Like your fake Columbia degree being discovered, and your subsequent disbarment."_

"_Yeah, I saw that episode. No need for the recap. But I see what you're getting at. I don't think you know the real world very well, Charles. I could get a job in an instant if I could argue my way out of a paper bag, never mind these little degree issues that I could easily gloss over by calling them 'little degree issues'."_

_Offdensen waited patiently for the follow-up. "But your friends…?"_

"_I don't know how capable they are, necessarily, of snagging a job right after community college. Annie's smart, Britta's competent, Shirley's capable… even so. And the rest of them? Kind of screwed. I'll take this deal."_

"_You're making the right decision."_

_They shook hands. Jeff shook his hand out gratuitously after he left the Starbucks. _


	2. Team Sports

"I don't get why Jeff is above us," Troy said.

"I think it's a metaphor," Abed said.

"… Hey, yeah."

"It's not a metaphor, you doofuses!" Jeff called out to them from above. "I just tossed you some weaponry. I don't want Troy and Abed to get all Britta at me. You're on my side, so don't talk about me being above you and… do your best, I don't know. I didn't have an end to that rant in mind."

"Doofuses. Have I ever been called a doofus?" Troy stopped to actually think about as he picked up his paintball gun. "Hey, this is a nice gun!" He wriggled joyfully. "Man, Abed, we gonna do some serious damage, being paintball pros and all."

Abed didn't even smile back as he inspected his weapon. Little highlighter-yellow balls were in his. "Don't get cocky. That'll be the first step to your ultimate downfall. Then again, being Troy, I think you were already a couple of steps on the way."

"The match started!" Jeff barked. "Get to work!" He turned his attention to his own opponent – a grotesquely fat young man with a humorless expression, his actually huge paintbull machine-gun type device dwarfed by his size.

"Aren't we supposed to have two people down here?" Troy asked, him and Abed inching closer together in their cute little fighting stances. "I count one."

"You counted right this time," Abed said. "That other one must be fast. Remain alert."

Just as he said that, _PLIT! PLIT!_ They both had a neon orange stain on their shirts.

"AW, hell! What, wait, where is he? I didn't see that! Did you see that?"

"He's a speedster."

"What? He's a- what-"

Abed didn't listen, just fired off a few rapid shots at their opposing team member, a lanky teenager with a mop of brown hair.

"HEY!" the teen shouted. "Why don't you focus on more PRESSING matters, huh?"

"Hey, owwwWWW!" Troy cried out and rubbed his eyes. "There's... stuff in this paint!" Abed's eyes were tearing up, but he ducked behind the nearest hay bale and tried to watch the brown-haired guy. He was stumbling away, presumably to find his own hiding place to cry in pain in.

Troy cried out again as he was hit rapidly by little orange balls again. Paintballs were a pain on their own, but these had tear gas in them. Abed resisted the urge to rub his eyes and watched the ground closely. There was a flutter of dirt. For sure it was a speedster. He wasn't just fast, he must have had some sort of strange power or device.

"THIS SUCKS PIERCE'S DICK!" Troy shouted.

"Oh, for…!" Jeff had to finally turn away or risk his spirit being drained like Shirley's was whenever he used the name of the Lord in vain. The group had agreed to put Troy out on the field because he was athletic, not for him to get pummeled by someone with a talent for playing hide-and-seek_. With white hair, he had WHITE HAIR, for the love of… how hard is it? _Meanwhile, he had his own person to deal with.

His own overweight, creepily laughing, clumsily approaching person.

Jeff tried shooting him straight on in the chest.

Absolutely no effect.

"Dammit. That's what I thought."

He stumbled faster, no longer laughing. "You're going down, you little yuppie."

"Oh, yuppie. Did you come up with that yourself or did you really hear it a lot back in the nineties?" Jeff spoke as he darted away, towards a slightly larger model of paintball gun in his sight. He shot it again. No effect. Damn. It. "And I wasn't aware being overweight was a special skill. How many years of hard work and getting picked last in gym class was that worth?" And is that some sort of paint BAZOOKA in my sight? It had to be, something huge. It was the last in a long row of ranged weapons. Jeff jumped over a few guns in an effort to reach them.

"You can't run that easily, you punk!"

"OH, punk, there we are again, using the nineties to our-" Jeff turned around mid-insult to get conked in the head with his suddenly airborne last-dropped weapon. He see stars, then felt gravity, and caught himself, but not before stumbling halfway off the platform. "This goddamn platform!" He struggled to climb back onto it. Come on, post-studying gym trips, do your magic…

"Oh no! Poor Troy!" Annie clutched her cardigan. She and the rest of the group were sitting on hard plastic chairs, watching from their assigned seats in the sidelines, safely behind a mesh fence. "And Jeff's going to fall! This is awful. I thought after that monster paintball match went awry at Greendale, we'd have a chance, but I guess… that happens everywhere?"

"I think Troy should have been on the platform," Britta crossed her arms. "He's faster than Jeff and could take out that obese creep no problem. Jeff thinks calling him names will do something in this type of match."

"Jeff wanted to be on the platform because it made him feel in control," Pierce said. "Although to be honest, nothing about paintball seems in control to me. I don't get how this anything to do with getting us a job."

"Pierce is right, for once."

"I'm right all the time! It's just that none of you believe it. You won't even listen to me anymore when I talk about youtubes."

"Not when you call it youtube_s_. But honestly, even I could have been doing better than Jeff. What's he doing? Why didn't he let one of us go?" Britta now turned to Shirley, hoping for a kindred spirit, but Shirley just kept her worried eyes on the match.

After a moment, Shirley shifted in her seat and said, "Maybe… maybe Jeff was worried that if _he_ didn't volunteer, you'd complain about women having to do all the work."

"I wouldn't-! But-… well, okay, MAYBE that's something along the lines of what I believe in. Something I would… vocalize… my beliefs for. But that doesn't mean I would COMPLAIN per se about pseudo-feminist… OH, WHAT'S WITH THAT LOOK?"

Troy had managed to gain the presence of mind through a barrage of paint balls and tear gas to throw himself into a sand ditch. It wasn't helping the barrage much (he had begun crying out for the help of his mother, everyone in the study group, and Oprah). But it would help Abed.

"Thank you, Troy!" Abed called out, popping up for a second.

"YOU'RE NOT EFFING WELCOME!"

Abed popped back down. The fact that the speedster did not even hit him meant that he had completely focused on Troy. Abed ducked out from behind his bale of hay and closely observed the sand. One hit on Troy. A mark in the sand to his left. One hit, then a mark on the left. Every five seconds or so. Abed raised his gun. The fourth second came, he shot a stream of paintballs where the mark was.

In an instant, right on the mark, a white-haired teenager seemingly appeared out of nowhere, squeaking and clutching his yellow-splattered leg. "OW! Hell! I hate it when they learn to predict!" Abed got a couple more hits and squeaks, and the white-haired guy darted off, only to become a slowing blur and then just a stumbling mass, crying and rubbing his eyes.

"No way! This ends now!" The lanky teenager from before came out of hiding. He stomped on the ground and focused on it…

Jeff grabbed a gun instead of pulling himself all the way up. He shot a few times at the creepy overweight Blob-man again. This time he hit him in the eyes. He cried out in pain and stumbled away from Jeff, tripping over various weaponry, but not quite over the edge.

"YEAH, maybe that'll teach you to, uh, eat right and exercise. WOW, I'm not on my game today." Jeff got one leg over to climb up. The second he did, the entire arena shook violently and Jeff went hurtling toward the ground.

Troy climbed out of the sand ditch. "Wait, Jeff's on the ground. Does that mean he's out? And, WHOA, WHOOAAA, CRAZY EARTHHQUAKE IS CRAZY!"

Abed immediately picked up that Lanky Teenager was the one causing it. _Bizarre. But pretty cool_. He shot at him a few times, trying to keep balance on the shaking ground. Two hits connected, but it had little effect. Abed fell and took cover again. The white-haired teenager had darted off again.

"He's got some kind of… stupid helmet thing on!" Troy lay on the ground and clutched his weapon for some sense of security. "Hey Abed, he's got- Abed?" Nowhere to be found. Troy whined and crawled to find his own chunk of hay.

Their opponent stopped his quaking. "Where'd they go? Pietro!"

The white-haired teenager, Pietro, appeared in front of him. "What do you want? Keep doing your stupid earthquake thing, Lance! I've done way more than you have!"

"It's not a match to see who can do more damage, you little jerk. We're just trying to win. I don't even really want to be here. I stunned them, now go do your thing!

"All you did is sit somewhere and admire these stupid little guns! Then you came out and _oooooh, you threw things around for one minute!_ I'm so impressed! MAN, I don't even need a gun or any weapon. But I was told it was a PAINTBALL match. Look, I got hit. A lot. My eyes sting like a bitch. YOU do something. I'm sick of this crap."

_WHUMP!_ Troy tackled Lance like a football player. When they were both on the ground, Troy scrambled over and whipped the helmet off of his head.

"What the hell! It's a paintball match, you spaz!"

"DON'T WEAR A HELMET UNLESS YOU WANNA BE TACKLED!" At close range, Troy shot him in the face. Lance writhed in pain and grabbed his blue-stained face.

Pietro was too busy cracking up to notice Abed sneaking up behind him. Abed shot him square in the back of the head. The force knocked him over.

"OHMY- ohmy- HEY!" Pietro touched his head and came away with a handful of orange. "Oh no. No. Screw this. My hair, you can't- LANCE. I'm not dealing with this."

Lance finally regained his footing. "Don't you dare quit on me!"

"Deal with it!" Pietro stuck his tongue out and disappeared.

Lance looked at Troy and Abed. "I could shake this entire arena until it splits in half."

"We could shoot you with paintballs until you look like you belong in a Lady Gaga music video," Troy said.

"You know what? I quit, too. You guys are not even worth damn tear gas paintballs." He melodramatically tossed his weapon aside.

"Oh, that's mature," Jeff said from where he sat on a small bale of hay.

"How long have you been there?" Abed asked him.

"Since I fell down from the platform. I didn't hear a rule saying I couldn't sit here and watch. By the way, you've got to take down the big guy up there. And I don't think he's raring to jump anytime soon."

Blob, the poor thing, was trying to figure out how to use some of the more complicated paintballs, but hadn't succeeded in much besides accidentally shooting his foot with three different colors from the same odd device.

"How do we get him down?" Troy said.

"If this were a comic book, luring him with food might work," Abed said. "Sadly, it's not. I think we might have to do this manually."

"That could take a really long time. Look at him! He looks like he's… from Texas or something."

"See that five-foot-long black thing over there?" Jeff pointed to where he had fallen. "That was a device I never got to use. I think it's some type of paint bazooka. It sounds highly dangerous and highly effective."

Troy started towards it. "Is it fair for you to help us?"

"Is it fair to put three normal people with three superpowered people?"

Abed helped Troy pick it up. "I think we should get used to it. Something tells me we're going to have really utilize our Ragtag Bunch of Misfits skills in the next few rounds, because these guys probably weren't the only people with strange powers or tricks."

"I still don't believe they had powers, per se," Jeff said as Troy and Abed pressed a switch that made the giant gun whir alarmingly. "I think it was a bunch of weird magic tricks. Nothing too special, I'm sure."

"Sounds like wishful thinking," Abed said.

THOOM.

A canonball of paint hit Blob square in the stomach. Even on the four foot wide platform, he bounced off the back wall and onto the ground with a loud THUMP. Troy and Abed were sent flying backwards from the force.

Abed and Troy lay on the ground for a few seconds.

"Hey, Abed."

"Yeah?"

"You sure we're not in a comic book?"

"If we were, then as nice guys, we'd be guaranteed our lives, except for maybe a couple of us."

"I vote yes on comic book and no on Senor Chang living."

"He's not here."

"Quiet, I made a joke. Let me have this moment."


	3. Recreational Period

**Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters used within.**

**A/N: I used some online resources to keep the game of Scrabble itself intact - I even used a little calculator to determine that Jeff would win. That was probably the most annoying part. Oh well.**

**

* * *

**

"Hi! I'm Lilo!" She adorable little Hawaiian girl extended an adorable little Hawaiian hand over the card table, which Jeff took, figuring he would humor her. "I was told by that really nice guy over there that you have a weakness for crying girls…"

Jeff turned his glued-on smirk to Troy. "I'm glad you think telling the enemy about our weaknesses is a good idea."

"Well, wait- I'm, I just- I mean, it's- look how cute she is!" Troy gestured to her wildly. She smiled at him, then back to Jeff. "And look at that creepy blue thing. It's cute too. Creepy but cute."

Jeff turned to his attention to a noise-making blue dog. "I have no idea what that is. I don't think it's a retriever, huh?"

"No… Stitch is a special dog."

"I'm glad that's all you seem to fancy telling me because I don't really care about people's dogs for me than one sentence."

"Say goodbye to your friends, Jeff," Charles Ofdensen was there to act as a sort of moderator. Jeff was growing very unnerved at not seeing many others in charge. "This isn't Who Wants to be a Millionaire."

"I don't need their help. I'm playing Scrabble one-on-one with a little girl."

As Lilo's small team surrounded her to offer a bit of advice, Jeff's circle did the same. He gestured to them to back off a bit.

Abed said, "Jeff, you should probably be careful. That girl may pull a Linus or a Calvin and actually have some hidden skill, such as a highly advanced vocabulary."

"I'm a lawyer. I've got a decent vocabulary too."

"Now, Jeff, don't let her pull any little girl tricks… they try to seem cutesy, but I think as you and I were both taught in early childhood, there are few more deeply evil things than a small woman scorned." Pierce obviously thought this was very helpful advice.

"While I'm happy that you apparently remember early childhood, mine was very different from yours."

"Since nothing that happens to us is ever easy, I'm going to assume that beating this girl in a board game is not as easy as you think it's gonna be," Britta crossed her arms over her Target cardigan. "But just in case it is, don't whip this girl too hard, okay?"

"… Nah."

"Jeff, I want to remind you that while Britta has a valid point of view, I support any decision you make regarding this game," Annie seemed to be trying a little too hard to encourage Jeff.

He would pee blood before letting her know that it actually made his heart swell a bit. "I haven't seen you around much at this game."

"She'll be part of the storyline eventually," Abed was the next to make his way over to Jeff. "Jeff, my only piece of advice would be to remain cautious. This set-up is too easy for it to not go wrong."

"Thank you, Indian Jesus of television."

Abed backed off, and Troy leaned in toward Jeff, looking very grim with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. "Everyone keeps walking up to tell you something. I just wanted to tell you that your button-down shirt looks good with your jeans today."

"That is actually the best anyone has made me feel so far, Troy. Thank you."

"Get it!"

A little buzzer sounded shortly after the last of both teams were escorted out behind a set of tinted windows. Both contestants were given their letters.

Jeff's letters were 'J, Y, U, X, L, O, E'.

Just when Jeff realized that they didn't pick who could go first, his chipper companion said, "You can go first!"

Jeff snickered. _Humor her_. "Thanks, Lilo. That's very polite of you."

She nodded.

Jeff smiled again and looked at his letters. _Sucks for her and her niceness. This is actually a nice set of letters._

It was a very nice set indeed. _Plenty of vowels._ He took a few seconds to look at the list. _You can do a lot with vowels. _

He exchanged a nice smile with Lilo before turning his attention back to his set. _Surely, there must be a lot you can with vowels. And a couple of consonants._

Those few seconds turned into thirty.

_There's… there must be a lot I can do here._

Thirty turned into a minute. _It's, I just, it'll just take a minute. I'm just pulling a blank. How weird. This just- I'm just pulling a blank. What- this-_

"Uh, sorry. It's a weird set. Haha, it sure is good you let me go first!" _ HA. HA._

She began bobbing back and forth in her seat and yawned.

"It's, I, it-…" He made an unintelligible sound and used the center square to spell the word 'lox'. "I suck at Scrabble."

"Then why'd you play it?"

"I think it's one of those games that everyone forgets they suck at it."

She used his 'x' instantly. "Xeric."

"WHAT? 'Xeric'? What does that mean?"

"It means lacking in moisture." She locked eyes with him. "I studied 'X' words!" She toddled in her seat a bit more. "I was really hoping you or I got an 'x'."

He got three more squares. Now he had 'M, Y, I, C, N, D, Q'. Staring at the board for about ten seconds. "Oh, beat this."

"Clue?" She looked at it for three seconds, tops. "Mine is 'emote'."

"WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THESE?"

She found his anger funny. "My head! Don't you ever look at the dictionary?"

"No."

"Oh."

"Don't 'oh' me, little girl! Take this!" He used her 'E'. "'End'! You will see that soon."

She stared at him blankly.

"THIS IS SERIOUS."

"Why is it so serious? It's just scrabble. Your friends also seem to think it's really serious. Why do they think it's so serious?"

"I'm here to win something for them."

"Oh." She picked up the wood squares and held them for a few seconds before clicking them into place. "Like that?"

The word 'lox' was now connected with 'love.'

"That's sweet."

"Yup."

He took advantage of her 'V'. "Victims."

A buzzer sounded.

"Dear LORD, I love taking dramatic pauses."


End file.
